baking: does it come easily to you?

I usually like to use a combo of butter and shortening so that it's flaky without being brittle. But I have to make a pie today and am out of shortening, so I'll make my best attempt at an all-butter crust and see how it goes.

I use the recipe that Lily posted!

i read the thread title as "banking" and i thought, Yes, yes it does!

but baking, i'm afraid it does not come easily to me.

oh ok. i have tried butter shortening combo and found it didn't help but have gotten very flaky w/just butter. obv opinions vary on this. dorie greenspan recipe has like 1/4 cup shortening and the rest butter (i believe this is the same or adapted from julia child), and so does the king arthur one. but my shortening went bad bc i never use it so i used lard when i did the dorie one. it was ok but both of those fats seem to get softer faster. i am pretty committed to all butter after experimentation but i also really like butter.

1/4 cup shortening and the rest butter is what I ended up using today because that was what I had. It was a bit harder to work with than I'm used to but turned out fine, with a bit more of a shortbread flavor from the butter. I had to guess at the amount of salt because I use salted butter; I took it down to a heaping 1/2 tsp which seems about right.

I have found in the past that my all-butter crusts turned out flaky but a little tough, but I know other people get good results with all butter so it's probably just something about my recipe.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/cb4bf53cf8f6f700f83ae42dd2854637/08bdcad84931388f-ef/s1280x1920/974db38a27c6f4b327edf85285ee145784ccd25b.jpg

My first decent pie (from here)! The blueberry filling is a little one-dimensional so the next time I make it, I'm probably going to add some lemon juice and maybe ginger/cinnamon/cardomom or maybe even add some raspberries.

I tried that pecan pie recipe again and this time it turned out way better. I was low on honey (which I normally use instead of maple syrup) so I subbed in mashed bananas. The consistency was different but still tasty!

glad it turned out!

this is my go-to, neverfail pecan pie

http://desertcandy.blogspot.com/2007/11/pecan-pie.html

That looks great! I notice though that it doesn't mention toasting the pecans. Do they get crispy in the bake? I assume not, and that I should toast them in their own before I put them in the filing.

if you arrange some halves on top for decoration theyll get crispy
no need to toast them though, seriously that is not at all necessary

Maybe it was just the bag that I got this time around, but I didn't like the texture of the pecans when I didn't toast them this time! Kind of mushy, and not very crisp.

you do you :)

if Leee can’t make wildly questionable substitutions he’s not interested afaik

<3 lol

ok i was wondering about this but don't want leee to be offended but since you brought it up: leee why do you substitute so much???

i want it to be fall so i can bake these things. it's just too hot.

lol no worries!

I guess it's a holdover from before I really got into baking and didn't always have pantry staples on hand, as well as (possibly misguided?) notions of using healthier ingredients, as well as seeing how far I can get with (homemade) vegan products. (Homemade because store-bought tends to be more expensive and I can create only as much as I need and not worry about the unused leftover spoiling.)

Nowadays though I'm mainly focused on avoiding sugar and coconut products (he sez while with a mostly full jar of coconut oil in the pantry).

xp one benefit of living in SF is that it's 60 degrees year-round and ergo always baking weather!

Just made a very fluffy banana bread, except I only had two ripe nanas so I subbed in a mango that was sitting around, ryde I don't care because it's really good.

one soft fruit for another sounds uncharacteristically reasonable Leee

i bet it was great

Et voila!

https://64.media.tumblr.com/c6dd28c060d7965a299bef6c33707b73/6df84e9df02fdb48-e0/s1280x1920/523ed8c913680811f3ca08b8c66ace542c940bc7.jpg

And yes, it's very good.

nicely done!

https://tybe.tumblr.com/post/660739054009188352/strawberry-pie

This one turned out well! I’m still using Lily’s crust recipe though this time I didn’t par-bake, and yet it came out super flaky. I do like the slightly raw taste but this was a nice surprise.

I'm coming to realize that some fruits that I love to eat fresh do not bake well, namely strawberries -- I find the change in texture less appealing. I'm better off buying a basket and just eating it raw!

yeah strawberries don’t hold up well, i think because they dont really have much of a “skin” and the flesh is v porous

You have to turn strawberries into compote if you’re going to use them in a baked dessert unless: the raw part of strawberry shortcake.

i made some strawberry cream cheese muffins and the strawberries were awful.

they also need to be with an acidic thing like rhubarb because they get so bleh by themselves

I love balsamic vinegar with macerated strawberries.

I find strawberries very tart and acidic usually! But I've never tired to bake with them, I guess.

yea the moisture in fruit makes baked goods go wonky. freeze dried then crushed/powdered can give you a pretty good wallop of flavor, or dried fruit if you don’t mind some chewy bits

Dried fruits are A+! One of my favorite muffin recipes uses the, to great effect, they're such a good sweetener.

Strawberries are a little bit tart when they're raw, but that acidity tends to get overwhelmed when they're baked into a soggy undifferentiated glop. I wonder if adding lemon juice might help that out.

Blueberries hold up pretty well in bakes, save for the pies I've made so far. In fact, most of my fruit pies have been unimpressive.

ok i was going to post about this before but i felt bad for criticizing my mom's pies, which are really not bad (just...not as good as mine lol), but she doesn't do enough to address the watery fruit issue. for apple i have had success with a recipe that has you macerate the apples and let the liquid drain off for a few hours. you then cook the liquid with corn starch (it forms a caramel-like texture that is very appley) and add it back before putting it in the pie. dorie greenspan's blueberry pie recipe has the blueberries mixed with flour (iirc), then you also put unseasoned bread crumbs in the bottom. it produces the most perfect pie slice with barely any watery juice. it's important to do this with pie because the crust and the density of fruit mean the liquid will not evaporate off sufficiently, as opposed to a cobbler or crumble that is open as it bakes and also has cake batter or other starch to soak it up.

Ground almond is great in blueberry pies, tarts and (my fave) clafoutis. Also if you are making muffins or cake, soak the bloobs in corn starch solution and they won’t sink to the bottom.

I've followed recipes mention coating bloobs in flour, and I haven't had an issue with them sinking.

And if I ever try my hand at a fruit pie again, that ground almond hack sounds great! I assume it's there to soak up the moisture?

I really don't mind a juicy apple pie, and I've never liked that gloopy texture that you get when you thicken it. I'd much rather have the juices soak into the bottom crust, especially if I'm using an apple like Granny Smith that has really tart, flavorful juices. For cherry and blueberry pies I mix the fruit with the sugar and flour and let it stand for a bit before cooking it, which seems to work well. I use frozen sour cherries and they're really good, almost as good as fresh.

Blueberries are tricky because commercial ones have so little flavor; it's worth using wild blueberries, but even the wild blueberries you get in stores are pretty bland so you have to put in lemon juice to make them tart enough. If you ever get a chance to pick fresh blueberries and make a pie, do it. It's amazing and tart and bursting with flavor and you don't need any citrus at all.

The blueberries in the UK are really good (lots come from Poland). The ground almond hack is really effective if you’re making a French style tart, with custard: after your shortcrust is part baked, cover the inside of the base with a generous few tablespoons of the ground almond before covering with your bloobs. Bake that for 15 minutes, make some custard, then pour the custard over the bloobs and return to the oven.

it doesn't come out gloopy! if you mean that weird canned pie filling-like texture. it's this recipe but as i recall the temperature may be too high https://www.joyofbaking.com/ApplePie.html

Re apple pies: I totally hear harbl about the juices method! I always find a lot of water in the bottom after the sugar spice mix draws it all out. Sadly I would usually just discard it and then pile the drier apples up verrrry high in the pie since they break down so much. Just thinking about it is making me miss pie!

I'll give it a try! I've never put any thickener in apple pies; I just slice the apples very thin and layer them with brown sugar and cinnamon, and I always use very tart green apples, and it ends up juicy but not wet. But mine definitely have a soggy bottom; Bake Off would not approve.

Ideas on how to make chewy chocolate chip cookies? I remember an Alton Brown recipe that recommends using bread flour, ostensibly because of higher protein content, in which case, could mixing the a batter of all-purpose longer than is typical to better build up the gluten achieve the same result?

apparently resting the dough in the fridge for an hour or more makes them chewier but i havent tried it bc
i am too impatient & hardly ever rest my dough, also i like crunchy cookies anyway so

yeah the nyt choc chip recipe uses a combo of cake & bread flour and also recommends to rest it in the fridge for 24-36 hours... unsure which of those things contributes to the chewiness but i can confirm it's a v yum recipe.

i always rest it at least 24 hours but i'm not sure how much that contributes to chewiness, it's more of a flavor thing. chewiness comes from butter content and baking temp iirc. i always make this one: https://www.food.com/recipe/worlds-best-chocolate-chip-cookies-by-dorie-greenspan-332767

i would not suggest doing anything to develop gluten in a cookie

this is the best article about chocolate chip cookie variables https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-best-chocolate-chip-cookie-recipe#toc-giving-the-cookie-dough-a-rest

ah and it will send you straight to resting the dough, scroll up to the top of course

lol resting the dough is probably the easy tip that I wanted to hear the least because like Veg, I am very impatient. I'll try the Dorie recipe though -- especially since it uses whole sticks of butter (I don't like having leftover sticks).

Any no-bake suggestions so that I can avoid using the oven in the midst of summer?

this one is a classic & super easy

https://littlespoonfarm.com/no-bake-lemon-icebox-pie-recipe/